Tl;dr:
- Several geographic effects of the erosion of the Appalachian range over hundreds of millions of years, like the Fall Zone, being the dividing line between the hilly, higher altitude Piedmont interior and the flat, sandy, swampy, and nutrient poor exterior.
- Hurricanes
- Malaria
Huh. I’m certainly not as well-traveled as some, so… right on?
Lol.
Lots of that space is really beautiful countryside. I’ve driven through a fair bit of it.
Wealthy people used to summer in the Appalachians - it’s 10-20 degrees cooler there in the summer.
Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway run for a total of hundreds of miles from Northern VA to I think Georgia, along the eastern portion of the Appalachians. I’ve ridden some of it on my bike in the summer, and it’s amazing, especially the Shenandoah valley.
Really, once you go west of 95 even a couple miles it becomes farmland.
I’ve driven the entirety of i95, and Richmond was the very last of the northern metropolis. After Richmond, there was nothing until we hit Jacksonville, and continued into central Florida.